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I've gotten a number of emails asking if complaining to Salon could help reverse the decision.  Just so I don't have to keep responding to these emails, I'll say here that I got the impression that it would not — the decision seemed very firm, and made with an awareness of the popularity of the strip.

But if you want to write to Salon to express your disapproval, I guess I shouldn't discourage it.  If you do, remember:  even when provoked to anger, Tom the Dancing Bug readers are always courteous and respectful.

People of Earth:

Salon.com has informed me that they have canceled Tom the Dancing Bug.  I have no idea where they're going to get their australopithecine comics now.

Of course I'm grateful to them for the run the comic has had with Salon — founder David Talbot brought it on board at the site's inception, way back in 1995 when the world was shiny and new.  Just for fun, below is the first Tom the Dancing Bug that appeared in Salon — you can see precursors to my "News of the Times" format, and to God-Man.  For some reason, I always liked drawing God characters.  Just trying to get on His good side, I guess.

I was told that the cancellation was made because of "severe budget constraints," and that traffic for the comic continued to be good.  I know that must be the case; it was consistently on Salon's "most read" list.  In fact, on the day they informed me, Thursday, out of the dozens of features to be published on that day, Tom the Dancing Bug was one of the leaders in popularity.

And when I checked in yesterday to see what Salon's "Comic Page" looked like, I saw that Tom the Dancing Bug was still there, and doing fine in comparison to what is now Salon's last surviving comic strip, Tom Tomorrow's great This Modern World.

But that's life in the fast lane of the information superhighway.  Of course you can still read Tom the Dancing Bug every week in newspapers across the country, and from the link here at www.tomthedancingbug.com and at gocomics.  But Tom the Dancing Bug is now a full free agent on the web, looking for a partner with a strong web presence that would be enhanced by frequent particle collider jokes, ducks making fun of presidents, and ghosts of living celebrities.  And frankly, what web publication wouldn't?

-Ruben Bolling

My most totally awesome comic ever.

T-Rexes… on SATURN!!

The beauty of Richard Thompson drawing Alice, of his great comic strip Cul de Sac.



A reader alerted me to this uncommonly thoughtful essay naming Tom the Dancing Bug the 7th best comic of the "aughts," finishing just ahead of that talentless hack (sarcasm) Chris Ware.  It's not clear what comics finished 1 through 6 — maybe those slots haven't been revealed yet, but it's hard to imagine what could possibly have finished ahead of Tom the Dancing Bug, The Best Comic Strip Ever ™!

"It’s a good thing Charley’s not a bonobo, or he’d be looking at hard time instead of just a long walk."
-fritzoid, on the uclick site

Charley the Australopithecine

Kudos to whoever at Salon headlined this week's comic "Travels With Charley," a reference to the John Steinbeck book describing his travels with his dog Charley. Charley was actually named after Steinbeck's dog.

This week's comic about the particle collider was so abhorrent to the physical laws of nature, that it sent ripples back in time and replaced it with this incomprehensible nonsense about DR. HANNIGAN AND DR. BAHAR'S PARTICLE COLLIDER PROBABILITLY SHIFTER.

This article, from the New York Times a few months ago, has to be one of the weirdest I ever read.

I wonder if this could be put to practical use.

A little while ago, I did a "How to Draw Doug" installment in a Super-Fun-Pak, and then followed with a blog post showing an older "How to Draw Doug."  I knew this older one wasn't the first one I'd done, but I couldn't find an earlier one in any Super-Fun-Paks.

I finally remembered where I first drew a "How to Draw Doug":  It was in a Tom the Dancing Bug comic book, published in 1995.  The comic book was a compilation of published strips, but I drew up original material for the inside front cover, including this: